Kweku Abimbola

Born in the Gambia in 1997, Kweku Abimbola earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. He is of Gambian, Ghanaian, and Sierra Leonean descent.

Abimbola’s first full-length poetry collection, Saltwater Demands a Psalm, was published by Graywolf Press in 2023. In 2022, the début collection was selected by Tyehimba Jess to receive the Academy of American Poets’ First Book Award. In his citation, Jess praised Saltwater Demands a Psalm as “a healing, a diasporic divination, an elegy of ancestral elegance.” Abimbola was a finalist for the 2021 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and the second-place winner of the Furious Flower 2020 poetry contest. He has had work published in Shade Literary Arts, 20.35 Africa, The Common, Obsidian, SUNU Journal, and elsewhere.

Abimbola has worked as a teaching artist for the literary nonprofit Inside Out Literary Arts and lectured in English and creative writing at both the University of Michigan and the University of Tampa. He is currently an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Loyola Marymount University. Abimbola is also serving as the poet laureate of El Segundo, California, and is the second poet to have this role.